Customer Reviews

Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was surprisingly underwhelmed by this book. I am normally a big fan of Jeff Schewe (see my Real World Camera RAW review for example) but this book really missed the mark for me. I really expected the same book layout presented in Real World Camera RAW, that is, a brief overview of the advantages of the proposed process, lots of in-depth examples to show the technical variations, and some additional "advanced" topics to help readers structure an improved process. Unfortunately, this book was plagued by a lack of focus and a theoretical approach that lacked substance.

The book seemed to get lost in esoteric and sometimes confusing examples that are often concluded with summary paragraphs with this basic theme of, "You could do it that way but it's not very good." I was left with the feeling that the authors included numerous examples and provided great detail just to debunk a specific technique. I don't really need 4 pages to get the point, simply recommend that we not use Sharpen or Edge Sharpen and be done with it.

My interest was in seeing examples of differing sharpening approaches and the advantages and disadvantages of each. There are a few examples like that in the book, but they are, unfortunately, few and far between. In fact, if you've read Real World Camera RAW, you've actually seen one of the examples already. Perhaps I had false hopes in a book about sharpening focusing primarily on examples. I have no interest in Continuous Tone printing, I do very little Creative Sharpening for the majority of my work, and I only rarely sharpen images for Offset Press. With only a portion of the book aimed at photographers using Camera RAW and an Inkjet Printer, this book seems to be misaligned with the majority of photographers out there with DSLRs and a desire to understand sharpening.

I really hope that the author retools this book for the third edition and simply goes after "Real World Sharpening in Camera RAW and Lightroom" and aims it towards the majority of photographers printing to inkjet printers. This approach would seem to have a much larger base of interested readers and would address the key concepts of sharpening as applied to a tangible workflow. As the book now stands, it's a theoretical approach short on examples that leaves this reader needing additional information.

Save for certain "special effects", sharpness, clarity and smooth tonal gradations are amongst the critical hallmarks of excellent photographs, and go to the heart of what distinguishes photography as an art form. If you never thought that anyone could fill over three hundred pages with technically essential information and instruction about sharpening photographs, think again because here it is, and it's really important for anyone who strives for excellence in their digital imaging work.

Much more than a cookbook on how to sharpen a photo (though it does that too), this book, now in its second and expanded edition, describes in a way that's easy to understand the very fundamentals of digital imaging technology and image structure which give rise to the need for a multi-stage and multi-purposed sharpening workflow; from there the authors go on to present in considerable detail the optimal techniques for implementing it, so that those of us who read from cover to cover will understand the basis of the techniques they recommend. Years of experience and experimentation are bundled into these techniques, so one can have every confidence that they work well - as I do from having used a fair number of them myself. The book should cater to a broad audience because it covers sharpening, smoothing and noise reduction using a number of applications including Lightroom, Camera Raw, Photoshop and several 3rd party applications. Because some of these techniques have elements of repetitive operation image after image, certain parts of the sharpening process can be automated to improve our workflow efficiency. Photoshop has a functionality called "Actions" which permit one to do this. Hence I really appreciated the authors' inclusion of step-by-step instructions for creating several such Actions, along with Chapter 6 which contains one of the most approcahable introductions to the creation, editing and use of Actions that I've seen in the Photoshop literature.

I own a substantial collection of books, videos and other reference materials on digital imaging, and I must rate this particular volume as one of the most valuable in my library. It is the most technically comprehensive and innovative resource I've ever seen covering sharpening, smoothing and noise reduction, all of which are vital to achieving excellence in the production of fine photographs. It is also very readable and well illustrated.

Oh - and more thing: "Hamish" plays a central role in this book, so if you'd like to find out all you want to know about "Hamish", you'll just have to get it :-)

Five Stars Plus

I consider myself a fairly competent user of Photoshop (PS), Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which is a plug-in that comes installed in PS, and Lightroom (LR), but one area where I didn't feel post-processing in my bones was image sharpening, which is the process of adjusting images to both overcome the image softness inherent in digital photography and to make artistic adjustments. I'd read the first edition of this book, and understood the difference between capture, creative and output sharpening, but wasn't always sure what those sliders in Unsharp Mask were doing for me. Since that first edition, Adobe had improved the sharpening facilities in ACR and LR. It seemed like visiting the second edition was in order.

After explaining what sharpening is and why images need to be sharpened, Schewe, building on the work of the late Bruce Fraser, explains multipass sharpening and the somewhat different approaches taken by the main PS, ACR and LR software. The author then describes each of the tools available and their effects. He then shows the application of each of the tools to a digital workflow in each of the three softwares, and finishes up by showing how to speed up the processes by using actions and presets. Along the way, he also discuses digital noise and its reduction, an area that is intimately linked with sharpening.

This is not a subject for the photographer new to post processing. A description of the tools involved may be quite intimidating to the tyro, but ultimately every image processor has to face up to sharpening. Luckily, it seemed to me that Schewe had improved on previous explanations, and he incorporates several graphic techniques that make it clear. If the reader really wants an appreciation of the sharpening tools, create the test file presented in chapter 4 and follow along with the author on a computer. When I had finished the book this time I not only had a much better feel for sharpening but I also had several pleasant surprises.

As Schewe explains, capture and creative sharpening require the use of several different PS tools for effectiveness, and understanding what each does is important to understanding the process. But LR and ACR combine these processes and ultimately make capture sharpening much simpler. Similarly, output sharpening is much more cut and dried, with the sharpening to be applied a matter of factors, like original and final image size, all of which are virtually formulaic, and which my image processor of choice, LR, applies on the fly. Creative sharpening (if needed for artistic reasons) still requires an export to PS, but is much easier if one is not being confused by capture and output sharpening.

To test my knowledge and good luck, I reprocessed and printed several pictures from scratch (i.e., the RAW file). Following Schewe's guidance I was happier with each of these images than, or at least as happy as, I was with my old prints. I think I finally have a handle on sharpening.

I bought this book to get an understanding of how to sharpen for print. This is probably not very useful (although it is covered in this book) if you only want to sharpen for web since there are many Photoshop plugins that easily automate the sharpen for web process.

In a nutshell, this book will give you an understanding of what Capture, Creative, and Output sharpening steps are. For each of the 3 steps, the authors provide in-depth coverage of the many different ways to achieve each as well as lot of examples (you can literally see 100% zoom inset pictures all over the book that demonstrates the result of each method). I am writing from a perspective of sharpening for Inkjet Prints so I find this book very useful since print sharpening almost always requires all 3 steps above.

Before reading this book, I found my prints to be sharpened inconsistently. After I read this book, I have much better results and handle on how and when to do Capture, Creative, or Output sharpening to each of my pictures. For those reviewers who are writing about "lack of workflow" in this book, I would suggest that this book gives you all the necessary tools to create your own sharpening workflow, which in a nutshell is Capture Sharpen -> Creative Sharpen -> Output Sharpen. How much to apply in each step is up to you and will vary from picture to picture so there is really no definitive single workflow that works for each photo. You just have to learn the basics and then go with your intuition and practice until you get it. :)

There are a lot of Photoshop books out there... I've read many of them. Most try to cover everything but can do so only at a relatively shallow level. Some of Photoshop's tools are complex and deserve deeper and fuller instruction. This book fills that need as far as sharpening images is concerned. Following the recommended 3 phase sharpening routine, Jeff shows how to get there using Camera Raw, Lightroon and Photoshop. This book delivers exactly what you need to know.

I would also recommend pairing this book with the Jeff's book on Camera Raw. Camera Raw plays an ever more important role in the digital image 'development' process and having expert guidance is a real time saver.

I bought this book with the expectation that it would provide that latest on photo sharpening techniques and it lived up to my expectation. Details were provided on how all of the various sharpening functions work in Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom. However, the one significant topic the book lacks is for examples to be carried through the whole sharpening process. The authors could have found three or four example photos that could each have been carried through the sharpening process for each of the programs. These examples would have better demonstrated how and when to use the appropriate technique in each program and, given the price of the book the additional pages required to provide the examples would give the buyer more value.

Recommended for anyone looking for an in-depth understanding of the technology and best techniques for optimizing digital processing using appropriate multi-stage workflows for varied types of source images and output media; written by experts in a friendly, no-nonsense style, using ample illustrations, example photos and screenshots; assumes intermediate/advanced skills in Photoshop.

First, this is way more than just a book about sharpening. To read the front cover, you might think that what it is going to do is explain the sliders in the PS sharpening window. While it certainly does that, it does very literally 1000 times more. It addresses every factor that degrades sharpness, and does it in considerable detail. Managing sharpness is joined at the hip with managing noise. The book has a comprehensive treatment of noise and how to get the best of the tradeoff between noise and sharpness in post-processing. There's a treatment of appropriate target resolution for your images. There's a brief discussion of the backfocus problem. Then there's the treatment of your target display technology, whether, for example, internet or print. There's a discussion of the three types of print and how their properties and resolution should influence your image resolution. There's even a discussion of what the human eye can resolve. There's an excellent discussion of the importance of image frequency. What does all this have to do with sharpening? If you want to do the very best you possibly can with sharpening, all this stuff has everything to do with it.

Even so, I truly believe that the book is overkill for the vast majority of readers. You might think you will be able to just pull out what you need and apply it, but it ain't that easy. Some other reviewers have faulted the book for not providing straight-forward procedures for applying sharpening. These reviewers, I believe, make a valid point. If you are looking for a clean set of rules and procedures, you won't find them here. I haven't read the earlier edition (by Fraser, now deceased), but what we have now is somewhere between a scholarly treatment and a textbook for dedicated students. I'd be willing to bet that not one of the reviewers truly mastered the material in this book. I'm a Ph.D. experimental physicist. I probably won't master it. What I'll probably do is end up spending 10 to 15 hours total on it and, with that investment, manage to extract what I want to take away from the experience. True mastery would require reading various segments and then trying to apply the info provided -- experimenting until I developed a true feel for it. The real question though, is whether it has to be that hard. I believe the book can give average readers a huge leap forward in capability without so much investment of time.

When Jeff Schewe reads this review, I can guess what he'll say. He'll say that the subject is too complex to reduce to the Betty Crocker level. He'll say you have to have all this background knowledge to be able to know where you want to go as well as how to get there. He's got a point, but I'm convinced the book could do better.

I think the book should be organized into sections that converge on processes that solve various parts of the problem. At the end of each section should be a summary process that takes into account the items explained in the section. For example, there needs to be a formula with printer resolution, print size, and viewing distance as inputs and an image resolution as output. (If it's a function of more variables, make it so, but just providing a gross approximation is good enough for most of us.) If some experimentation is required, the book should say so and explain how to go about it. If you need three formulas, one for each kind of print rendering, then the book should provide three. It is wonderful that the book provides all the information that it does; it is unfortunate that it is not focused more on summarizing and simplifying the application of the information.

I have very strong empathy for Mr. Schewe. He has an amazing wealth of knowledge on this subject. He wants to share it, and he doesn't want to leave anything out that is important. He has already done a Herculean job of sorting information out, organizing it, and codifying it. He has endeavored to provide examples of real images at every turn. It may not even need a lot reorganization to attain better focus on the user's immediate needs. He can make a huge leap forward by adding summary processes. Mr. Schewe, you are almost there.

As for me, I'm already doing a much better job of sharpening than I was before. I am now careful to begin by reducing noise. (I bought the Noise Ninja plug-in for PS.) I now have a far, far better grasp of how to set radius. I'm beginning to understand how to use multiple sharpening passes. I know more about what problems to expect and how to recognize them early before I get too far past them. I also understand why some of my earlier efforts turned out poorly. I can see effects of faulty sharpening (especially too much radius) in my own recent efforts. I do believe that I can and will reduce what I'm continuing to learn to a manageable set of rules. If I succeed at that, maybe I'll send them to Mr. Schewe.

There are a few nits that I have to pick. There are places in the book that use technical terms not previously defined. That is inexcusable. There are important pieces of info that are hard to find through the index. The index is about average in its coverage, but a book of this caliber deserves better than average.

I'm assigning five stars because this is the most comprehensive book in print on its subject. It has already paid for itself several times over for me. I'm just saying it has the potential to provide more useable information without so much investment of time.
Tim Naff

As anyone who uses digital imaging software is aware, the vendor provides very limited support on how to achieve the best results from their product. Adobe, with their work books and help support may do better than most, but for the most part photographers are left to find their own way in developing an effective and asthetically pleasing workflow. In this book, Jeff Schewe has puled together an exceptional amount of information and outright wisdom on how the thoughtful photographer can best use current versions of PS, CRW and LR2 to manage image noise and sarpening from initial capture to output. Drawing on his work as a consultant to Adobe, supplier of some of their sharpening algorithms and alpha and bata tester for the subject applications, you are given a solid understanding of how the verious functions of the tool are actually operating at the pixil level as well as how to effecively integrate them into your image editing workflow. Unless you have the depth of knowledge of this author, you need this book and can expect to see immeidate improvement in your image editing results.

Dave Thomas, Eugene, Oregon

It is a very easy job writing a review for this book, as it is simply the best explanation of digital photo sharpening I have ever seen. After reading it my understanding of the subject is totally changed and never again will I apply some undefined sharpening procedure to my photos as the book explains in a vivid way how to do this in an intelligent way. Simply the best.